


The End of An Era

by Avidiece



Series: a new era [1]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: (I promise this fic genuinely talks about fencing with significance), Fencing, Marinette Dupain-Cheng-centric, Memory Loss, Post-Canon, in short: marinette forgets she was ladybug after hawkmoth but can't figure out why she feels wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:00:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26486803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avidiece/pseuds/Avidiece
Summary: The first couple weeks, she didn’t particularly notice, and neither did the people around her. Finding Marinette during an akuma attack was always like catching water in a net, so for the most part people just assumed her behaviour shift was relief from the lack of akumas after Hawkmoth was no longer an issue.But then Marinette’s memories of things weren’t lining up with those around her- her mother tells her how last week she got trapped in the basement by the flour bags for the duration of the fight. But Marinette remembers walking from the street up to the living area and seeing the news report afterwards. She remembers. She remembers waving to Adrien as she walked in and her cheeks being wet for some reason. Maybe it was raining and she forgot that too.AKA Marinette looses her memory of her time as Ladybug, and nothing seems quite right to her. She tries to find something to fill a void she can't name.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Series: a new era [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1925563
Comments: 7
Kudos: 42





	The End of An Era

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired loosely by this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eP_tPZGvBzA (which I would absolutely recommend!)  
> Doesn't follow the video directly, but I watched it two hours ago, got a spark of inspiration and here we were 1.3k words later

The first couple weeks, she didn’t particularly notice, and neither did the people around her. Finding Marinette during an akuma attack was always like catching water in a net, so for the most part people just assumed her behaviour shift was relief from the lack of akumas after Hawkmoth was no longer an issue. 

But then Marinette’s memories of things weren’t lining up with those around her- her mother tells her how last week she got trapped in the basement by the flour bags for the duration of the fight. But Marinette remembers walking from the street up to the living area and seeing the news report afterwards. She remembers. She remembers waving to Adrien as she walked in and her cheeks being wet for some reason. Maybe it was raining, and she forgot that too.

The longer time passes, the more she notices, but most of it she can excuse. Why is Adrien avoiding her more? Perhaps he finally noticed her crush on him- how embarrassing! Why does Alya say she has so much more free time to come over now? Marinette doesn’t remember being particularly busy in the evenings, but maybe she was studying. But her grades dropped the past two years… Maybe… Maybe she was working on her designs, that would make sense. The biggest part of drawing is practise. Why does everyone else have stories of meeting the two saviours of Paris? She can’t say she remembers meeting them, but Nino says he remembers seeing her with Chat Noir, so it must’ve happened at some point.

Why does she feel like she’s missing something recently? Her life feels almost like a shadow, and she cannot figure out why. Logically, she knows everything is the same as it was last month- with the exclusion of Hawkmoth. And if anything that should make her less stressed. So, why does she feel like she’s grasping at straws for something that doesn’t exist?

She’s been having odd dreams, dreams where she feels weightless and free; almost like she’s flying through the air- she could almost feel her hair whipping against her face. The cold of the winter nights bitterly pinching at her cheeks. In these dreams she’s rarely alone, there’s always someone familiar there with her. Their laugh echos through her dreams, its in nearly all of them. But the ones where it features more prominently are the good ones, the ones she wishes she could spend forever in- she can feel phantom pain in her cheeks from laughing so much. She wonders if she can feel that kind of enthused freedom again. There are bad dreams too. Where the phantom pain tears away at her muscles, where her arms ache inexplicably and she feels force like she never has before. More than they should from falling over yesterday, or exercising too hard during gym.

She always wakes up crying after these dreams- good or bad. She wakes with an ache like she’s never known before that has settled its way deep into her heart. A longing she can barely ignore. So she tries to fix it.

She hangs out with her friends more. Things get back to normal with Adrien, better than normal even. She (somehow) managed to start being coherent around him, and getting along with him has been so much easier ever since. The four of them have started gelling together like they didn’t before. It’s definitely not the same, but its better. Mostly. Alya has been searching for Ladybug and Chat Noir’s true identities since they vanished after Hawkmoth. Marinette pretends not to hear the fights her and Nino have over how hard she’s working herself, and how much they don’t want to be found. She also pretends not to see the tears that swell in both of their eyes when they talk about the heros of Paris for too long. Adrien always picks up the conversation more whenever the two of them do this.

She throws herself into her schoolwork. Her grades improve but it’s so draining that she feels more isolated than ever. Her parents are surprised by the development, but nonetheless they do their best to support her, even when she’s falling asleep over breakfast. But it doesn’t work. She doesn’t feel accomplished she just feels… she feels like she’s dragging her feet.

She works more on developing designs. It helps, definitely. The freedom of drawing the design, the careful mindlessness of marking and cutting and sewing, the calm of the finished product. She can feel her face glowing when she see’s her friends wearing stuff she’s made them. It’s definitely something- she loves fashion, and she feels so productive! But it’s not what she’s looking for. She keeps feeling like she’s spinning off her axis.

It’s a couple months after the vanishing of the heros of Paris that Marinette speaks to her friends about it. About the weird hollowness in her chest. They’re confused but genuine in their suggestions. Has she considered seeing the school’s counsellor? (Alya, and she already tried. The counsellor told her to write out her feelings, but all she ended up with was ripped paper and annoyance.) Maybe she should rejig her playlists, change up the vibe a little? (Nino, and changing up her vibe helped a little- she and Nino talked through what she did an didn’t want to be feeling.) Would she try fencing?

This one halted her train of thought for a moment. Adrien suggested it hesitantly as if she wouldn’t even consider it, and quickly rushed to add on that it helped him feel like he was refining a new skill constantly, and that maybe she could find something similar in it. She took a little time to process it, tossing it over in her head. In the end, she agrees to it (mostly because it threw her off so much), and when she mentions it to her parents they seem optimistic about the whole thing.

So the next week, she walks into the fencing studio with Adrien, borrowing Kagami’s spare kit. Adrien had talked her through the basics beforehand but holding the sword in her hand felt completely different. She got up to the platform and her vision zeroed in. This, this is exactly what she was looking for. The match is over far too soon, but she can feel the smile her smile in her bones, the true joy in the slap on her back from Adrien and his declaration that he didn’t even go easy on her.

At first, she thought it was a fluke, but the more matches she fought the better she did- she could practically feel her soul thrumming in her chest. She was so glad Adrien brought this into her life. She feels like she could ride this high for hours. When the session ends, she practically jumps Adrien when he asks her if she wants to continue doing fencing with him.

Week after week she improves, her body moves instinctively in ways she hadn’t even considered. She moves practically on muscle memory, but the more fights she plays the more she becomes attuned to the weight of the sword in her hand, the way her breath comes back against her cheek, the sweat gluing her hair to her forehead.

Sometimes she tries to think back to what she was doing before Hawkmoth was no longer an issue, but the vagueness of that whole time no longer bothers her. She can feel her worth in her fighting, in the way Adrien laughs so familiarly when she rips her helmet off after a win. It fills her heart. This is so much more than enough.

Hawkmoth marked the end of an era for the citizens of Paris, and the start of a new one.

**Author's Note:**

> Wasn't sure if I should tag this as minor spoilers or not- it's implied but not spoken outright that Marinette looses her memory because she returned the Miraculous box.
> 
> I genuinely haven't engagaed with miraculous for months, but this video came up in my recommended and I got super inspired. I feel really content with this despite it currently being 1am- please point out anything that contridicts canon or anything!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed!  
> I genuinely never realised how much comments really do boost your mood, so please feel free to leave one, even its just a string of exclamation marks haha.  
> Always open to constructive criticism and the like :)
> 
> Might make this into a series, I have an inkling of an idea of a longer piece from Adrien's perspective.


End file.
